4/5 Star Review: The Gate of the Feral Gods

This book was amazing. Princess Donut makes the book, as always. I listened to it as an audio book – HIGHLY recommended for all of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Rough story about Maggie & Chris. Frank. I wonder how Agnes manages each floor. I’m excited to start the next book and it’s probably the only book that I suggest people listen to the audio instead of reading it.

4/5 stars

BBBC for February (Bujo Buddies Book Club)

The Bujo Buddies Book Club read for February was Psyche and Eros, by Luna McNamara. This was my very first Greek mythology retelling, and to be honest, it really didn’t do anything for me. The very first part of the book was incredibly slow, and I wanted to DNF it, but I pushed through and the book started to get good even if the story made no sense to me. Then the story started to rush – and then the ending was SUCH a disappointment. I was very frustrated.

We had our monthly get together about this book and around 100 others showed up. Some were much more experienced with Greek mythology and were able to tell me things I didn’t know, like the fact that MOST Greek mythology end in death / sadness, so the fact that this book did not already made it good for some readers. It was also a mash up of a few different myths, which I hadn’t realized.

Overall, I gave the book a 2.5/5 rating, because it simply wasn’t for me. The pacing felt awkward and while I eventually fell into the story, the ending just ruined everything. I’m still glad I gave it a read, and I really do love participating in my monthly book club meetings even if the books are not all my favourites. March is a self help book, so I’m not expecting great things there, either.

2.5/5 stars

February Reading Wrap Up

It’s that time of the month where I go over how I did in my reading stats! That’s right, a new feature because I’ve never actually done a reading wrap-up before. Why not start now?!

The graphics are from TheStoryGraph which is my book tracking site of choice these days. If you’re into statistics, this is where you want to be. They even include a calendar of all your reading updates. Looking at February, I see it was another big month for books and I really hope that carries over into March, but if it doesn’t that’s alright too. I read a total of 7 books (29% of those were audio books, the rest were physical & ebooks) and my average rating was 3.57 – I only had one 5 star read, and that was ‘What I ate in One Year’ by Stanley Tucci.

I’ve decided moving forward I’d like to devote an entire spread to any 5 star books I read, mostly because I don’t often have a lot of 5 star reads, and I think it would be a neat little bit of creativity I could toss into my reading journal. I’m not 100% pleased with how the journal went this year, but I am determined to keep with it (as best I can) and then next year I can implement changes like moving to a square journal and organizing some things better. Right now the journal is a lot of statistics, and while I do love stats, I’d like a little more creativity to flow.

In January I read 6 books (I may actually backdate a post to represent this) which I also thought was a lot for me, but hey maybe this is the year for massive reading (so I can protect my mental health with all of the crazy that is going on in the world these days). I certainly have no complaints – and I really hope that March involves just as many (if not more) amazing reads.

February 2025 Wrap Up

Another great month for reading! I got a lot of books out of the TBR pile and into the completed pile. Only one five star read, but that’s OK. You can check out the reviews for each book throughout the month.

The month started off strong, but then everyone got sick and I fell behind. The best read was the audiobook from Stanley Tucci. Iron Flame was also pretty good. The book club read was a huge disappointment. The start was too slow and the end was very rushed. It was not a very enjoyable read. Better than next month though which is a self help book. I’m hoping I have another great month of reading.

Happy reading!

Still Here – Still Reading

Despite the fact that I rarely ever make it to actually posting on this damn book blog of mine – I have been reading this year. A LOT in fact. I’ve even been keeping up with my reading journal for once (gasp). Which is what the picture above is from. It’s two spreads that I’ve included, one that shows new releases for 2025 that I’m looking forward to, and the other spread (well, now it’s outdated, but I’ll get to that in a moment) talks about all of the books that I’ve purchased.

BookOutlet.ca also just happened to have a $7.99 sale and it coincided with the removal of taxes (temporarily) on some items. Some items being books. So I purchased 7 brand new books for $50 total, including free shipping. I was incredibly happy when they showed up. Which books? I’ll have to talk about that in a future post.

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of my reading journal spreads.

Why I Switched to a Kobo

I know there’s a lot of controversy right now regarding Amazon’s decision to no longer let you back up your kindle books to any non-kindle devices but that is not the main reason that I decided to swap over to Kobo. Let’s face it, the Kobo isn’t exactly any better in letting you explore outside their ecosystem. We’re basically ‘renting’ books, and we don’t really own them.

The main reason that I decided to opt for a Kobo instead of the Kindle that I’ve used faithfully for years now is because in Canada, you cannot borrow library books on your Kindle. The Kobo has exclusive rights. This year I’ve been reading a LOT of books that I borrowed from the library, both in audiobook and e-book format. I’ve been keeping track of the money I saved, and if you space your requests out, it’s really not so bad. My small library has a lot of popular books (not all of them, but a larger selection than I was expecting). Some of them I’ve been waiting to borrow since December (it’s now almost March) but again if you space them out – not so bad.

Anyway. It might have been chance that I decided on this exact moment to swap over, but the issues with Amazon re: downloads certainly didn’t help the situation, it just wasn’t my only reason.